Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre, is investing €500,000 in a Science Foundation Ireland funded research project designed to develop the IT and Enterprise architecture needed to create Smart Cities of the future. Limerick has been selected as a national case study for the project.

As part of the case study, researchers from Lero at Dublin City University together with Limerick City & County Council, will develop a new digital service (Insight Limerick) which offers citizens a portal for information sharing, open data and data visualisation while analytics will be used to gain insights leading to better services.

The Internet of Things will facilitate data capture from potentially thousands of sensors and devices from water, soil and air quality, traffic, cycling and pedestrian movement, parking event management and other sources. For the people, communities and businesses in Limerick to maximise the benefits derived from these new sources of information the data needs to be connected, shared, analysed and protected in a coherent and consistent way in order for new services to be developed and existing ones improved.

On Saturday 1st October in the Guinness Enterprise Centre (GEC) a unique collection of entrepreneurs gathered for #Spark2Start2016. Spark2Start is a free Startup Community Event for early stage entrepreneurs/startups where experts from all sections of the startup ecosystem came together to share their experience and advice. This event was hosted in the GEC with future events being planned in NDRC, DogPatch Labs and DCU Alpha.

The event proved very popular and the venue was full to capacity. Event organiser Ray Walshe and Founder of Spark2Start commented in his opening address that the turnout was a testament to the value of bringing all the ecosystem players together under one roof. Walshe said “Having experts from Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Centres, incubators, accelerators, co-working space, venture capital leaders, angel investors and startup consultants present, created valuable opportunities for startups to network. This is definitely the best way to do this type of pipeline event for the next generation of early stage startups. A huge debt of gratitude is owed to all those who helped make the event such a success”.

Like Ireland’s 400m sprinter Thomas Barr at the Rio Olympics, Team Ireland came very close to getting a Bronze medal at the Olympics of High-School Programming in Russia.

Teofil Camarasu, a sixth year student from Dundalk Community School came within 11 points of attaining a Bronze medal among 308 of the smartest young computer programmers from around the planet. 81 countries brought delegations to the prestigious 28th International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Kazan, Russia for one the toughest tests of these young students’ lives. The IOI is one of five international science Olympiads for secondary school students with this Olympiad focusing on computing science and information technology and was first initiated by UNESCO in 1989. Each student must solve 6 algorithmic problems over two days of competition, with points awarded for how quickly their coded solution runs against large data inputs.